


Condolences

by pickwicklingpapers



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Wakes & Funerals, this was meant to be one of my aus but whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 04:42:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5034148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pickwicklingpapers/pseuds/pickwicklingpapers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"i'm sorry for your loss" is a terrible thing to say</p>
            </blockquote>





	Condolences

"I'm sorry for your loss’ is the standard phrase. The phrase said at funerals. The phrase said by those who were bystanders in the deceased’s life, in the family’s life. Those who knew of them but didn’t really know them. Those who turned up anyway, to show some form of support. Because they thought they should. It’s said by those to whom a death makes no difference.

It’s a phrase said by those who don’t mean it. Who are secretly glad, through some twisted psychology. Those who aren’t sorry in the slightest. Maybe they caused it. Maybe they’re just there because of social propriety. It’s said by those to whom the death can only be a good thing.

It’s something said by those who have no other words. Those who were close to the body in the ground, the cold, bloating body that will slowly decay and will never care about them again. It’s a phrase said to one another on cold afternoons as the coffin is lowered or the ashes burnt in a grate, to be scraped together, making room for the next cold, inanimate object. It’s said by those whose emotions run too deep, to whom no words will suffice. It’s said by those who are broken.

 

* * *

 

Cosima had never really been well acquainted with the phrase ‘I’m sorry for your loss’. There was a funeral once – a great aunt, she thinks – but she was little, and not expected to say anything. She’d spent her time swinging her legs and staring at the clouds whilst the priest rattled on. Her parents hadn’t believed in any of that god shit anyway, and they’d made a quick getaway after. They’d explained the concept of death to her, but all she could think, six years old with baby fat and a bit of a lisp, was that she would not want worms to eat her body. Her body belonged in the sky.

The remaining years had passed with two healthy parents and no grandparents to suddenly drop dead. Her cousins and aunts are birthday cards in the post. She has no siblings until the day a Toronto cop calls her up and tells her that they’re genetic identicals. Despite the lack of experience, she thinks she understands death now. She’s not so scared of the decay – it’s just a series of steps, a succession of bacteria, of active decay and dry decay, of bloating and putrefaction. She understands the science, and the only real fear is fear of the unknown. Despite that, she moves her science into the future, into evolutionary development. Maybe it’s an unconscious choice, but she moves to the wonder of DNA, of life, choosing it over the study of death. She concentrates so hard on the pure brilliance of it that she doesn’t get the irony of her being a terminally ill clone until much later. She laughs so hard that Delphine thinks she’s having an attack.

She’s not. That’ll come later.

No matter what science she knows, she’s got no real experience of death. So Beth’s funeral is a bit of a shock. She and Alison watch from a hill on the other side of the cemetery. They can’t exactly show their faces.

It’s a sombre affair, small and private. Beth was a cop, albeit a cop on suspension for killing a civilian. After months of Sarah’s deception, it’s almost an apology by her co-workers. An apology for not noticing, an apology for not caring. An apology for letting her slip away, into depression and self-medication. There’s only a few of them - it’s not a grand exit. Beth was a disgraced cop, but she was one of them. There’s no body in the coffin, nothing to rot away with the decay that used to scare her so. Beth was burned as Sarah, and Cosima thinks that maybe there’s some symmetry in that. No one noticed that Beth wasn’t Beth, and no one cares that her coffin’s empty. Mistaken identity to the max.

Cosima feels awkward, out of place. She didn’t know Beth. The longest conversation that they’d had was when Beth had told her the truth. The cop and the hippie didn’t exactly gel. Alison sniffs next to her, brushing a tear away. Cosima turns to her and says the only thing that comes to mind

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

 

* * *

 

Leekie dies and Cosima attends the DYAD memorial. It’s a sham. No one is bothered that Aldous is dead, and no one believes the aeroplane lie. Cosima knows the truth. She’ll never quite be over the fact that Donnie killed him. Donnie.

As in  _Allison_  Donnie.

Regardless of the method, Leekie is dead and Cos can’t help but feel a little bit happy. Not having that dark shadow looming over her shoulder every moment, not having nosferatu ready to pounce at the slightest sign of weakness is just  _so_  refreshing. Rachel she can cope with. She sees that face every day in the mirror. The haircut itself isn’t threatening. She can deal with the accent. But Leekie’s combination – the tone of voice, the soft words, the neolution. It way in which she almost let herself be convinced. It scared her. More than death. More than decay. More than Delphine being her monitor.

More than the possibility of love.

Various top DYAD members are standing to attention, grief drawn on their faces as carefully as their makeup. As fake as the plants that litter the foyer. She spots Delphine among them. She’s not sure what their relationship actually was, but she suspects that there was a lot of manipulation. She doesn’t know what she was afraid of more – the surety of Aldous Leekie or the possibility of Delphine.

There’s a neat reception afterwards. A small buffet, delicate in the way that Aldous never was. Cosima feels a slight joy in the way that nothing here suits Leekie. No one cares about him. Neither does she. She reaches Delphine and puts her arm around the blonde’s waist. She smiles at the officials and says, as sincerely as she can

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

 

* * *

 

Cosima’s never said it to anyone and meant it. She’s never said it to anyone with real feeling, because she’s genuinely upset, because she has nothing else to say.

But then she watches Sarah say goodbye to her child, watches the hope drain from her face because Sarah Manning has never done anything that is not for her child. The original, the illness, DYAD and Topside – they’re nothing compared to Kira. And so she has to do this as well, even if it breaks her. She won’t crumble, not whilst Kira is watching, but Cosima’s there to see the aftermath. She sees the side of Sarah Manning that the world doesn’t know about, the side that is broken and shattered and taped together. Kira is gone and the last shred of glue snaps, rebounds, and shatters the other pieces into shards. Cosima takes one look and knows that this is it. Sarah will act strong, she’ll act like nothing is wrong, she will get the job done - but Kira is her weak point and she’ll never quite be whole again.

Cosima looks into the bathroom where Sarah is falling apart in Felix’s arms. She puts a hand on her sister’s shoulder and says quietly

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

 

* * *

 

But then this whole Castor thing starts and it turns out that they’re ill as well. They’re sick like she is with the same misfolded proteins, but it seems to her that maybe they’re sicker. They have nothing but delusions and a mother who does not love them, despite her pretences. They have no hope of a cure because symptoms show and a day later they’re dead.

She’s not all that sorry about Rudy or Seth, although the story Helena tells of the boy in the hospital room, his head cut open, makes her feel like she should perhaps help. Maybe the answer to their defect lies in the cure to hers.

She’s not convinced until she meets Gracie, until she meets Mark. He helps them, goes against what little family he has left. She can see the love between, thinks that maybe it’s something that she used to share with Delphine. Might one day share with Shay. And so, struggling to convey her thoughts, her pity that his life fade out in the way of his brothers’, in insanity and madness, that the only mother he has ever known would happily kill him, that he has unknowingly made his wife ill, that his brothers, evil though they were, are dead… She sits down at a table one day, looks him dead in the eye, and says

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

 

* * *

 

It’s her first proper funeral since that great aunt, so many years ago. The first that isn’t a sham, that has a body. The first where everybody there actually cares. The first that isn’t presided over by a larger corporation. It’s not needlessly decadent. The sky is as grey as she feels, and today of all days, the polyps on her lungs could take her now. She wishes they would, because she would rather not stand here and feel.

She didn’t tell Shay, didn’t let her come. It didn’t seem right, for some reason. Shay’s always been a separate entity. Her edges have occasionally merged with the shady side of Cosima’s world but for the most part she’s been an untouched escape. A saving grace. But not here. This funeral’s for family only.

It turns out that Delphine didn’t have any family left in France, which explains the lack of contact and the years at boarding school. Any family she did have didn’t care enough and so slipped away unnoticed. Delphine will not fade from the world like her relatives did. Cosima will make sure of that.

She will raise a plaque on every rooftop. She will take a helium balloon to the sky and spell it in the clouds. Delphine Cormier was here. She was alive. She was perfect and flawed and beautiful.

Delphine Cormier was mine.

She insisted on a cremation so that she might scatter the ashes high into the wind. Delphine’s been caged so much of her life, trying desperately to do the right thing for her parents, for Cosima, for the clones. Now it’s Cosima’s turn to do the right thing by Delphine. She’ll let the Frenchwoman fly, free and unbound on the wind. She won’t let her rot in a wooden cage, body overtaken against her will. Enough things have been done to Delphine without her consent. Enough manipulation. Enough unfounded hatred. There’s no coffin for Delphine Cormier because no coffin deserves to hold her. She doesn’t get to slowly decay. A headstone will be placed, however, in the same cemetery as Beth Child’s empty tomb. Framed by her glasses, Cosima can see the hill she and Allison stood on to watch the policemen salute.  Each time she comes here she gets closer and closer. Perhaps next time it’ll be her in the ground.

Too soon, the ceremony is over. They’ve said their parts and laid flowers on the marble. The simple block of stone will be left to weather, until the letters are unreadable and Delphine Cormier is nothing more than faint memories. Until every single one of them is dust. She stands numbly, red coat the same colour as Delphine’s blood on the car park floor. The grievers walk past, some touching her, some nodding, some sharing words of condolence

“I’m sorry for your loss.”


End file.
